SHREVEPORT, LA — Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger, accomplished
writers and experts on genocide, will give two public talks and visit
several classrooms in the Shreveport-Bossier area as Centenary College's
Attaway Fellows in Civic Culture April 17–21.

On Tuesday, April 18, the Attaway Fellows will visit a class on global
politics and dine with Centenary student representatives from the International
Society for Cultural Awareness. That evening Ms. Filipovic will give a
public talk called “A Bosnian War Survivor Remembers” from
5–6:15 p.m. at Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, which will be followed
by a book signing.

Wednesday's schedule begins with the Fellows speaking to fourth and fifth
graders at Fairfield Elementary Magnet on children's war literature. Then
they will talk with Loyola High School students on the issue of intolerance.

Ms. Filipovic and Ms. Challenger will will address an assembly of about
250 students at Caddo Middle Magnet early Thursday morning on how children
survive war. The Fellows will be back on Centenary's campus from 11:10
a.m.–noon for a public convocation called “Memorializing Genocide
through Music and Literature” in Kilpatrick Auditorium, which will
also be followed by a book signing.

Their visit will wrap up on Friday, April 21 with visits to a class on
European politics and a class that is studying the Holocaust in art, literature
and film.

Ms. Filipovic is the author of Zlata's Diary, the international
bestseller that chronicles her teenage years in war-torn Sarajevo and
has been translated into 36 languages since its release in 1993. She has
spoken about her experiences at schools and universities around the world
and has worked with different organizations such as the Anne Frank House,
United Nations and United Nations Children's Fund. Her next book, Stolen
Voices: Young People’s War Diaries from 1914-2004, edited with
Ms. Challenger, will be out in the fall.

Melanie Challenger

Ms. Challenger is the founder and director of The Mostar Foundation,
which has worked with Anne Frank Trust, UNICEF, British Council and Canadian
Initiative for Children in Conflict on projects that use music and literature
to promote moral awareness in young people. She was granted permission
to adapt Anne Frank's diary into a libretto, and it was the main musical
contribution of the 60th anniversary Holocaust Memorial Day at Westminster
Hall. Ms. Challenger is an award-winning, published poet, who is currently
working on an anthology of war poetry, the libretto for an oratorio that
will open Britain’s first major Jewish Heritage Centre in Liverpool
in 2008 and a non-fiction book, Drawn to Fire.

Funded by and named for Douglas and Marion Attaway, with matching funds
from the State of Louisiana, Centenary's Attaway Professorships in Civic
Culture are awarded to intellectuals who have made notable contributions
to the public discussion of ideas. They present themselves not as academics
who occasionally have public roles, but as public thinkers and gifted
communicators whose foremost interest is civic culture.